Radical Shift

Again The Mayor Of Madison, Paul Soglin Fights His New `Vietnam,`

Urban Sprawl

MADISON, WIS. — While much attention has been given of late to the reappearance of Indiana Jones and the Ghostbusters crew, there`s a sequel playing here that promises to have an even longer run.

Call it ``The Return of the Radical`` or, as his detractors of earlier days might prefer, ``Rabblerouser II.``

Its star is Paul Soglin, who grew up in Chicago and Highland Park and again is mayor of Madison after a self-imposed 10-year exile from politics.

Now 44, Soglin is the former student antiwar activist at the University of Wisconsin who was elected a Madison alderman in 1968 and then mayor five years later, causing considerable consternation and delight throughout the country. Among the delighted was the national press, who converged in great numbers on Madison to interview the new chief executive. It wasn`t every day that a campus protestor was in charge of the same city whose police had tear- gassed, beaten and arrested him.

One of those occasions was in 1967, while he was leading a demonstration against Dow Chemical Co., the manufacturer of napalm. Terri Schultz, a classmate, wrote in a magazine article of observing ``Soglin huddled under a coat`` as ``police hit and kicked him.``

In addition to being big news, Soglin was good copy. He was brash, smart and witty, and he did some politically outrageous things, such as traveling twice to Cuba and, during one visit, presenting Fidel Castro with the key to Madison, which Castro has yet to use.

Soglin was also effective enough as a leader and administrator to have been reelected twice before leaving politics for the practice of law. The achievements to which he points with pride include strengthening the bus system, dedicating a new Civic Center and revitalizing the downtown area.

This spring after deciding to come back-``I didn`t like the way my city was being run,`` he says, still brash after all these years-he defeated the incumbent mayor, Joseph Sensenbrenner, by a wide margin in a race described by Soglin as a contest between two liberal Democrats over who was more competent and offered the sharper vision of the future.

Except for a few differences primarily caused by the passage of time, today`s Soglin is much the same as he was a decade ago.

His thick, dark hair, for instance, isn`t as long as when he was in office during the `60s and `70s; his mustache, too, is trimmed more conservatively, no longer curling downward as rakishly as it once did; and middle age being what it is, he`s heavier in the paunch.

Yet there have been some important changes. Soglin was divorced when he left office in 1979, and at that time an article in The Tribune`s Sunday magazine noted: ``Eight years out of college, Paul Soglin has no wife, no children, no job, no responsibilities and lots of options. Maybe he`s still a slight bit radical after all.``

Soglin has since remarried and has two daughters, 4 and 2, with a third child on the way.

He thinks of himself as a pragmatic politician more than a radical, but he`s still good copy. The local reporters who cover him regularly still find him abrupt, sardonic, savvy, a think-out-loud, no-nonsense kind of politician, which is unusual for a lot of the people in this line of work, although maybe not so much in this town.

For many people, Soglin`s elections, then and now, bolster Madison`s reputation as a hotbed of what these days are regarded by many to be political undesirables, namely liberals and radicals.

If Madison is widely perceived as leaning farther left than other American cities, it`s probably because there`s a basis for this perception.

While there has been no move by the Bush administration to consider some type of quarantine, Madison really is-and has been for quite some time-pretty much a hotbed of liberals and radicals.

This is not to say everybody in town is a leftist, but it`s hard to ignore the last three presidential elections. Bucking state and national trends, Madison voted Jimmy Carter in `80, Walter Mondale in `84 and Michael Dukakis a year ago.

These left-of-center tendencies are a tradition, and most agree that the most significant factors have been the University of Wisconsin and the heritage of Robert LaFollette, a Wisconsin graduate who became a fierce Republican reformer, serving as governor of Wisconsin and U.S. senator and leading the national progressive movement in the first quarter of this century.

Perhaps the last liberal to do poorly in Madison was Abraham Lincoln, who lost the city in both of his presidential races.

It`s likely that Madison`s political image often overshadows its other qualities, chief among them its scenic beauty.

The city, shaped like a barbell, embraces four large lakes, its downtown built on a narrow strip of land between Lake Mendota on the north and Lake Monona on the south; most of the residential areas lie in what would be the barbell`s weighted ends.